Working together to face an uncertain future. [1353]

Group Admins

Description

As a newly formed School we are facing a lengthy process of integrating our teaching approaches and sharing good practice. This presentation will describe the collaborative process we have undertaken to address these challenges and accelerate the formation of a school-wide community of practice through action research informed by student engagement. This project investigated ways of engaging with technology enhanced learning in order to develop greater interactivity, with staff and students working as co-researchers in modules specific to the School of Modern Languages in order to create a more coherent student experience for the future.

During the project we set out to empower students to explore the skills they acquire when navigating digital environments for their studies. Participating students have explored the use and creation of Open Educational Resources and open licensing. Connecting across cultural and national boundaries in heterogeneous groups, the students reflect openly upon experiences and interactions available in a range of online open spaces. They have collected open badges evidencing their digital skills during their activities and produced artefacts including personal e-portfolios to explain the impact of participation. A panel of employers is to be involved in offering feedback on the student e-portfolios.

The project informs our understanding of the technical literacies necessary for sustainable professional teaching activity in the digital age. By making these insights explicit we hope to scaffold the professional learning for practitioners so that they can build greater confidence in their digital practice. It addresses the need to further develop blended formal and informal learning, as identified in the NMC report (p22). The project enabled staff and students to better understand the value of the skills acquired during language learning and communicate how digital skills can be applied within a disciplinary context to improve employability and mobility, addressing Jisc’s finding that “digital literacies aren’t well articulated in relation to employability skills.”

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